Thursday, January 18, 2007

More on "Academic Blogging," etc.

Via Planned Obsolescence: an Inside Higher Ed column by Scott McLemee on the blogging session and Scott Eric Kaufmann's paper. It also includes links to Kaufman's and Holbo's talks. One issue that's discussed is one that has made the rounds of blog discussions before: the seeming tendency of pseudonymous blogs to be written by people who feel (or are) marginalized by academic culture--grad students, women, and people of color. (FWIW, there are also some comments about "whiny" women bloggers, but that's another story.)

In terms of my recent musings about the limits and lifespan of my own commitment to blogging, I find that it’s impossible for me to stay clearly on one side or the other of “academic blog” versus “academic who blogs”. . . . There’s just something in me, maybe a masculine something, that balks at excessive self-exploration in this online format, or that sets the “too much information” bar at a fairly restrictive point.

This, and Michael Berube's closing down of his blog, made me think. These are genuine questions, not an attempt to criticize those I've quoted here.

How much information is too much information? What kind of information wouldn't you post on a blog?

Does an academic blog have a natural starting and ending point?

And, to oversimplify one of the messages that seems to be coming through, are "academic bloggers" (often those who perform as, or are, male and write under their own names) all about the display--scholarship by another means, as another way to impress the masses and climb the academic ladder--and "academics who blog" (often those who perform as, or are, female) all about continuing community and supporting each other in all those trivial, TMI details?